One form of carpet stretcher commonly used in the laying of carpets is a so-called power stretcher, which comprises a head with downwardly extending teeth to engage the carpet, a tailpiece and extensions through which pressure is applied to the opposite wall of the room to resist the restretching force, and manually operable power means interconnecting the head and the tailpiece to force the head away from the tailpiece, thus developing a force to pull the carpet toward the tack strip utilized near the baseboard of the near wall.
Since the distance between the location at which the pulling force is to be applied to the carpet and the opposite wall will always be varying, sectional extension poles or tubes are employed to transmit the pulling force from the tailpiece to the opposite wall. These are large and cumbersome, and must be carried to the job and subsequently removed. Even on a single job, the usual situation requires that the length of the poles or tubes be changed from time to time in order to accommodate the various pulling requirements. Furthermore, on some jobs there may be obstruction, e.g., a piece of furniture which it is not practical to move, making it difficult or impossible to position the poles so as to apply the pressure force from the tailpiece to the opposite wall. A "kicker" is often employed by a carpet layer, but it is not an adequate substitute for a power stretcher.
The present invention is an attachment for a conventional power stretcher to transmit the stretching force as a pulling force applied to the floor head of the stretcher. This is in contrast to the present practice of applying pressure to the wall at the rear of the stretcher. This invention has the advantages that: it is relatively low in cost, even as compared to the extension poles commonly employed; it is small and lightweight to move about and much less cumbersome than the extension poles; and it permits a highly effective form of power stretcher to be used at a location at which an extension pole to reach the opposite wall could not be employed.
We are aware of the teachings of the Ebert U.S. Pat. No. 3,980,274, wherein a blade is hooked against the side of the tack strip opposite to the area in which the carpeting is being laid, and a pressure member is placed at the rear of the tailpiece of the carpet stretcher. Ebert utilizes a frame that transmits the carpet stretching force from the pressure member to the blade and thus to the carpet strip immovably secured to the floor. Unfortunately, the Ebert device is a two piece device, such that the user must frequently reposition a pair of devices rather than a single, unitary device.
Even more importantly, the Ebert device can only bring about a pulling of the carpet directly toward the near wall, in a perpendicular relationship thereto, which is disadvantageous in that the pull of the carpet in an angular relationship to the near wall is often necessary in order to eliminate wrinkles.
We are also aware that an apparatus known as a power restretcher has been available to carpet layers and that this restretcher employs a blade which is hooked onto the tacking strip in a fashion similar to the blade of my attachment. However, these re-stretchers are a relatively complicated piece of equipment, certainly as compared to the attachment utilized by our invention. This means that the carpet layer has a substantial additional investment in a re-stretcher, along with the problem of getting it on the job and removing it when the job is done.
Some carpet installers utilize a so-called mini stretcher at such time as the edge of the carpet is to be brought up into close contact with the baseboard, with this device having a component that hooks over the tackstrip. Upon the installer manipulating the handle, the carpet tightening effect is brought about.
Unfortunately, the component that hooks over the tackstrip blocks the view of the part of the carpet being worked with, but even more importantly, the mini-stretcher causes a wrinkle to be formed in the carpet. It is thus usually necessary for a knee kicker to be used in order to complete the effort.
Significantly, our invention is not a carpet stretcher in and of itself, but rather may be regarded an attachment to the stretcher that the carpet layer already utilizes, with our attachment increasing the utility and versatility of that existing carpet stretcher at a modest cost.